About Your Privacy

Hi!

On this page, I will explain what you need to know about online privacy in general and how it’s handled by The Lesbian Romantic.

The Lesbian Romantic wants to earn your trust, give full transparency and ask for your consent. I will do the best (to my knowledge and skills) to gather, handle and protect your data in a way that follows this principle. I encourage you to read this page and take control of your online privacy.

Privacy on websites

Cookies

When you surf around the web, you always leave a digital footprint. Your browser, for example, keeps track of the pages you visited. But websites, too, monitor the behaviour of visitors.

Basic cookies

This monitoring is usually enabled by cookies. Cookies are tiny files that get stored in your browser. They’re not all ‘bad’. Without cookies, websites wouldn’t function properly. You wouldn’t be able to stay logged in for example.

Cookies can only live in your browser. When you use two browsers on the same browser, you will have two different cookies installed.

What you need to know about cookies:

Websites need cookies to function. All websites use cookies, including The Lesbian Romantic. Cookies live in your browser.

Statistics cookies

Certain cookies track your surfing behaviour for statistical purposes so website owners can get insights into the performance of their site.

Cookies enabling for statistics (usually) do not link data to you as a person. Just to your browser. A few examples of this type of statistics:

‘A user from CITY X visited this page from a mobile device’.

‘300 users clicked this button in that week’.

‘12% of users coming from the newsletter clicked that button’

Now, most websites track your behaviour with these cookies as soon as you arrive. You can stop this from happening, though. Certain browser plugins or specialised browsers help you to block the usage of cookies. I’ll post a list below.

It’s also good to know things are about to change. A massive, new privacy regulation will go into effect in the EU in 2018. All companies serving European surfers have to comply. This new law requires websites owners to ask for your permission to track your behaviour.

On The Lesbian Romantic website

The Lesbian Romantic no longer uses tracking cookies. I disabled the statistics cookie that was active in the past.

What you need to know about statistics cookies:

Statistics tracking is enabled on most websites. This website uses Google Analytics for statistics tracking. In the near future (May 2018), websites will have to ask for your permission to install these cookies in your browser. The Lesbian Romantic will update its cookie banner to enable this as soon as possible.

Marketing & advertising cookies

Other cookies track your behaviour for marketing and advertising purposes. These cookies will gather information on your interests, the ads you’ve seen or clicked or the pages you’ve visited. These are the cookies that enable so called ‘retargeting’.

Two examples:

-When you visit a website with some nice shoes and then see those same shoes on banners all over the internet, that’s retargeting based on cookies.

-When you keep seeing ads about exotic trips after visiting a blog about exotic trips, that’s because cookies registered your visits and reported back you are now interested in ‘exotic trips’.

It’s important to know these type of cookies are everywhere. Most websites use the ‘Facebook pixel’, for example, to be able to reach you on Facebook after you’ve visited the website.

But this also means Facebook (or Google or other providers) knows which websites you visit and can then use this information in several ways. Some websites sell this data to advertisers, for example.

Please understand that this is all pretty standard practise within the advertising and marketing world. You can immediately block these cookies with the tools listed below.

Soon, websites will have to ask you for separate permission to install marketing cookies. Companies will also have to list, very clearly, what they will use the data for. No wishy washy list or ‘all in one’ permission!

On The Lesbian Romantic website

In the past, this website has used the Facebook Pixel, Mailchimp Pixel and Google Remarketing Tracking. However, these are now all disabled to the best of my knowledge and skills.

What you need to know about marketing & advertising cookies:

These cookies are active on most websites. They gather information on your behaviour for the purpose of using this data in marketing & advertising. I have disabled these cookies on this website to the best of my skills and knowledge.

Your login and profile information

The Lesbian Romantic uses a website host with a great reputation for security and stability: WPengine. This website uses SSL technology to encrypt the communication between its server and your browser. The Lesbian Romantic also uses Cloudflare, a service that tries to protect website from attacks.

Affiliate links

The Lesbian Romantic website contains links and references to products and services that may include affiliate programs, sponsorships or other business relationships. Simply said, it means that whenever you click on one of those links here, and buy a product or service, I may get a small percentage of its price. This helps support The Lesbian Romantic podcast by Cheesecake Media. This affiliate link tracking is done by using cookies.

Newsletter

The newsletter and your email address

The Lesbian Romantic uses Mailchimp to collect and process the data (your email address and name) you share to receive the newsletters. You can access this data, edit it or remove it at any time using the links under every newsletter.

Mailchimp gathers data to report on the open and click rate of a newsletter. The system reports which addresses open the email and which addresses click on a link (and which link).

For EU residents, it’s important to know Cheesecake Media has a separate agreement to transfer the data to servers in the United States.

An overview of the data gathered on this website:

Your IP address when you sign up for an account, place a comment or place a post. WordPress tracks this for safety reasons. IP addresses can be used to block abusive users.

Your email address when you sign up for the newsletter.

The data and information you provide in your profile, comments, status updates and responses to questionnaires.

The data gathered (by cookies on this website and within the newsletter software) is used for the following purposes:

If you do not comply with the terms of service or community guideline, your IP address can be used to block you from this site.

If I am legally required to provide your IP address to law enforcement, I will do so.

Sending you regular email updates about the podcast, website or related services and products (after your consent by signing up for the newsletter)

Getting insight into your consumption of these email updates to improve them and/or develop new content, services and/or products

Your status updates and comments or replies to questionnaires might be used as inspiration for new products or services.

If you have any questions, please do contact me at sigrid(remove this and use just the @ instead)lesbianromantic.com

Sigrid

Block Cookies Tools & Information

This website uses cookies. Cookies are files stored in your browser and are used to help personalise your web experience. You can find out more below. If you wish to disable the use of cookies and opt out, please check these links:

Disclaimer

I have tried my best to inform you about privacy in a way that’s easy to understand and to the best of my knowledge and skills. You are encouraged to visit this page again so I can inform you of any changes to the policy.

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Disclaimer

The Lesbian Romantic website contains links and references to products and services that may include affiliate programs, sponsorships or other business relationships. Simply said, it means that whenever you click on one of those links here, and buy a product or service, I may get a small percentage of its price. This helps support The Lesbian Romantic podcast (a teeny-tiny bit 🙂